The present invention relates to techniques for an apparatus configured to evaluate a severity of a lesion of a patient, particularly, for a lesion evaluation information generator configured to generate evaluation information for evaluating the severity of the lesion based on color information of an endoscopic color image.
In general, a lesion has a color different from a color of normal mucous tissue. With improvement in performance of a color endoscope apparatus, it is becoming possible to identify a lesion having a color slightly different from a color of normal tissue. However, in order to acquire an ability to distinguish the lesion from the normal tissue based on such a slight color difference in an endoscopic image, an operator of the color endoscope apparatus needs to be trained by a skilled person over a long period of time. Further, it is not easy even for a skilled operator to distinguish the lesion from the normal tissue based on such a slight color difference, and it requires careful operations. In view of the problems, an electronic endoscope apparatus has been proposed that is configured to perform a color conversion process of highlighting color differences in endoscopic image data captured with white light, so as to make it easier to identify a lesion (e.g., see Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2009-106424, which may hereinafter be referred to as the '424 Publication).